Fermented tea in boy's lunchbox brews trouble at school

Here are three of the seven flavors of Bucha-brand kombucha tea. The one on the left, guava mango, is the flavor an 11-year-old boy at a Newport Beach intermediate school drank last week, igniting a debate about natural foods and school policy. PHOTO COURTESY OF BUCHA LIVE KOMBUCHA

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District will re-examine its disciplinary practices – and its hard-line policy against alcohol – after an 11-year-old student brought a bottle of kombucha tea containing a tiny amount of alcohol to school.

The boy, a seventh-grader at Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach, originally got in hot water for having a glass bottle in his lunchbox on Oct. 9. School officials noticed that the label on the bottle of fermented tea said it contained less than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. District policy states that anyone who possesses products with even trace amounts of alcohol could be subject to discipline.

According to a district spokeswoman, the boy was questioned by the vice principal the next day, with a school resource officer from the Newport Beach Police Department present. The boy was told that the consequences of possessing alcohol could include a referral to a program to treat youth substance abuse. The vice principal initially recommended a five-day suspension, but officials later decided against any such punishment.

"There hasn't been time to change policies at this point," district spokeswoman Laura Boss said by email. "However, the discussions have begun as to how we can work to develop a more nurturing approach when dealing with issues regarding discipline that don't fit the standard 'black and white' drug and alcohol issues."

The boy was kept out of class the rest of the school day on Oct. 10 and studied in an administrative office as school officials tried to reach his mother. The mother met with the vice principal, Mary Jo Vecchiarelli, later that day, but it didn't go well. "My meeting with her made me feel, ridiculous, confused, outraged, ridiculed and blamed," the mother wrote on her own blog, called Fresh and Free in OC.

The mother could not be reached for comment, and on her blog she refers to herself only as Leslie G. Neither she nor the district has identified her son.

Kombucha (pronounced "kom-BOO-cha") is made by combining live bacteria with yeast in sweetened tea. Some devotees of the 2,200-year-old beverage say it has a range of therapeutic benefits, from aiding in digestion and building immunity against diseases to preventing cancer and stopping baldness, although there's little modern scientific evidence to support the claims. Other fans simply like the carbonated taste and drink it as an alternative to sodas and juices.

However, ethyl alcohol is a natural byproduct of the fermenting process. Any drink that has less than 0.5 percent alcohol is not classified by the federal government as an alcoholic beverage, so anyone under 21 can buy it. The alcohol content is so low it won't cause drunkenness; by comparison, a can of domestic beer is 4 percent alcohol by volume. Home brews of kombucha often produce higher concentrations of alcohol, and some companies have created 21-and-over versions whose content runs between 1 percent and 3 percent.

Commercially bottled kombuchas for sale to the general public are labeled as having less than 0.5 percent alcohol. But in June 2010, a problem was revealed when Whole Foods announced that several popular brands of kombucha had been voluntarily pulled from store shelves after some samples were found to have alcohol levels ranging from more than 0.5 percent to 2.5 percent.

The beverage makers that survived the withdrawal reformulated their products, and now, two years later, kombucha is gaining momentum again. GT's of Beverly Hills dominates the U.S. market, with its Enlightened Kombucha and Enlightened Synergy drinks. The brand Leslie G. packed for her son was Bucha Live Kombucha, made by B&R Liquid Adventure LLC of Torrance. The company's website states the drink has less than 0.5 percent alcohol, and the particular flavor Leslie G.'s son drank, Guava Mango, usually has much less – 0.22 percent, said founder Bern Galvin. "That's next to nothing," Galvin said.

On her blog, Leslie G. said her son has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and that it had contributed to past behavioral problems at school. She said her family's healthier diet, which included kombucha, has had a positive effect on him. "He LOVES our new lifestyle. He LOVES Kombucha. He LOVES educating the other students on the detriments of processed food and sugar," she wrote.

After the meeting with the vice principal, Leslie G. took her story to Sarah Pope, who writes the Healthy Home Economist blog. Pope's blog post Friday unleashed her army of readers. It has generated 19,000 Facebook "shares" and nearly 400 comments on the post alone, many of them brimming with outrage for the school administrators and their actions. On Friday, Leslie G. met with Principal Gloria Duncan, who "determined no discipline was necessary despite the violation of the policy," said Boss, the district spokeswoman. The district also posted a statement on its website noting that the student had not been suspended.

Leslie G. wrote on her blog that Duncan was "very nice and receptive," but that she "held firm" to the zero-tolerance policy on drugs and alcohol. "It really made me look into home schooling, but I don't want to further make my son feel bad," Leslie G. wrote.

Boss said in an email that school administrators had never encountered kombucha before, and although it technically violated policy, "unfortunately, during the routine discovery process, the incident escalated and a reasonable reaction by the school site administration got out of hand and was misunderstood."

She said kombucha itself won't be banned from campuses in the district. "However, the current district policy remains that products containing any traces of alcohol on campus may be subject to the discipline policy.

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